


honey, you're atlas in his sleepin', and when you move, I'm moved

by TheOccasionalSquirrel



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Established Keith/Lance (Voltron), Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) is a Good Boyfriend, Keith is god of death, Love, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Mild Blood, True Love, for some reason, i never know what ao3 tags to use, i think it counts a bit as hurt comfort too? i think, idk this is a birthday present, klance, lance is god of sleep, oh also Keith is a CEO, that's why hypnos and thanatos are tagged, there's like vague notions of a plot in the second half
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28866717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOccasionalSquirrel/pseuds/TheOccasionalSquirrel
Summary: “Ugh, this city,” scowls Keith, wiping his shoe off the concrete after he’d stepped into something nasty.“This city,” comes an awed whisper from Lance, gazing at the lifeless concrete buildings scattered around the warehouse district. His giddiness was the kind only non-human creatures could have for the mindless cogs in human society. Their warehouses, their storage facilities, the houses for their dead things- their technology.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wertdifferenz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wertdifferenz/gifts).



"Or you could stay in bed?" Lance drawled, twisting in the sheets to have a good look at Keith as he got dressed. 

"Some of us," Keith adjusted the tie around his neck, "have actual  _ work _ to do." He turned, letting Lance drink in the full glory of Keith in a black suit. 

It wasn't unusual. Being the CEO of Blade Tech meant that casual clothes were out of the question for any occasion- even if he was visiting his boyfriend in the not-so-savvy parts of town. Lance knew this, was used to this, but who was Keith to deny him a look at the rather sinful way the coat hugged Keith's waist. 

It took Lance a record breaking three seconds to roll his eyes and look away. "Well,  _ some _ of us like to  _ enjoy _ our time in the mortal realm," he yawned. 

Lance. Hypnos. God of sleep. 

Keith sighed and walked over to sit on the bed once more. He ran a hand through Lance's soft curly brown hair. How he managed to shape his vessel so beautifully every time astounded Keith. He just stuck to what he knew. "You're too pretty to spend all your time asleep," Keith said, matter-of-factly, to which Lance smiled. 

"And you're too pretty," Lance snatched Keith's hand out of his hair and brought it to his lips, "to play a corporate fool all day, and yet." Lance kissed Keith's knuckles. 

"And yet?" 

Keith. Thanatos. God of death.

"You go walking around like a corpse all day," Lance's grin was sweet enough to make an angel sin. 

"And you think a few hours of sleep will help me?" Keith arched a brow. The concept was ridiculous. But so was spending time in the human realm when there was perfectly good wine and company on Olympus.

"Oh no," Lance smiled, rising up to leave a quick peck on Keith's lips. "That would be  _ ridiculous, _ " he mocked as if he knew  _ exactly  _ what Keith was thinking.  _ 'He most likely did', _ Keith thought, cupping Lance's face to steal another kiss.  _ 'How long have they been together? Two centuries? Three? He was so used to Lance, knew his words and speech and thoughts. Knew the furrow of his brow and the taste of his lips and the exact shape of his body beneath his fingertips.'  _

Keith broke the kiss first, stopping Lance's hands before they could wander beneath his coat,  _ again.  _ "It would be, wouldn't it?" He said and stood up, adjusting his black tie and the red shirt underneath. 

And oh, the look in Lance's eyes, hooded and beautifully blue. Like he knew, he knew, he did. His lips curled into a lazy smile, kissed, red, wanting. 

"I'll see you later, Keith," he mumbled, and pulled the duvet over him. In seconds, Lance was asleep, and Keith was left wanting. 

_ Later, later. _

To return to the only being that welcomes death into its arms. Hypnos, the beautiful god who delivered sweet rest onto the world. Lance, the breathtaking blue eyed man. Keith would've been dead seven times over if he wasn't death itself. There was something wonderfully awful about his lover. Nights spent in bars causing bloodied knuckles and trouble. Days spent asleep, bathing in the shy sunlight as it crawled into his small apartment. 

A different kind of decadence than what Keith was used to.

Not tailored suits and polished cars and the telling steps of expensive shoes on marble. Not wine and red lipstick kisses pressed on white collars. 

Oh, but they were the same. Creatures that crawled the night- exploring streets and the shape of each other's bodies by midnight.

Leaving knuckles bloody at one am.

Letting moonlight glint off a silver knife by two.

Blood pools at 3 am, it glitters gold with ambrosia or copper with mortality but it doesn't matter. It never does. 

Because it's gone at 4am- the world is left as pure as moonlight in the water. 

And then finally asleep-  _ ordeadorasleepordead _ \- by morning light.

Decadence and fist fights and kisses when they shouldn't- they really, really, shouldn't. But they indulge in this mortality anyway. 

He grabbed his keys from the counter and left. 

Death and sleep, they walk hand in hand you see. Never far apart. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part two, written this year, unlike part one, which i wrote for lu's birthday last year
> 
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY FRIEND!! I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUU

His hands tighten where he grips the edge of the sink.

Blood swirls, dilutes, and disappears along with the water mercilessly pouring out the tap. 

“Hypnos,” Death says in greeting, leaning against the doorframe, daring not to fully enter the bathroom. 

“Hey Than,” Sleep says casually, as if blood wasn’t pouring out of his vessel’s nose. 

“We’re running out of time.”

Their vessels, after all, were human. Mortal. No amount of ambrosia could change that. 

No amount of ambrosia could help fit a god in human bones. 

Keith stepped inside the bathroom. A calculated risk. Lance was the one who became dangerous when his vessel became unstable, and  _ he  _ wasn’t planning on going comatose any time soon. Not when they had so much work to do. 

“Hey,” he gently places his hands on Lance’s shoulders, ignoring the stark contrast his expensive watch paints against the other god’s cotton t-shirt. They could never agree on what roles to play. Benefits from both being too valuable. “We’ll be fine,” he says. 

Death, it does not lie. 

Lance’s shoulders relax a bit, Thanatos’ calm voice soothing him amongst the chaos of dripping blood and running sink. 

“Give me a towel,” he mutters, slowly coming back to himself. Keith lets go of his shoulders in favor of grabbing a clean towel from a doorless cabinet. Lance turns off the tap, no amount of water could wash off the blood of a god. He turns around to see Keith waiting there expectantly with a towel, clearly not intending to let Lance clean himself on his own. 

He yields with a sigh, not one to ignore the death grip Keith has on the towel, and leans against the sink. 

Red stains the white towel as Keith gently dabs it around Lance’s face, using his free hand to cup his jaw. Gentle, gentle, caring touches. The caress of death on his cheek. 

“Are you back yet?” He asks quietly, so close Lance could feel the words against his own lips. 

Not quite. He was not quite there yet. Immortality didn’t fit inside human bodies, and thus it tended to drip and leave traces of itself everywhere. Doubtless, there were people asleep right now with more caffeine in their bodies than water, just because a certain god of sleep was losing control of his vessel. Lance envisioned them as tendrils of unconsciousness swirling around the city, and slowly, slowly, he pulled them back and into himself. 

Keith was patient through all this, both of his hands gently holding Lance’s face. An anchor. Something for Lance to hold on to during his unraveling, his storm. Nevermind the fact that  _ he _ was the one being held.

“Alright, I’m here,” he says, opening his eyes to see that Keith was closer than he remembered. He rests his forehead against Death and sighs, gazing into those violent, violet eyes. Two perfect pools of endless mystery. “Let’s get to work.”

~~

It didn’t take Lance long to get ready, but compared to Keith, it took him eons. But this is not to say that Lance is inefficient, rather, it’s that Death would never care for the frivolity of hair styling and outfit picking. His “perfect” appearance was magic, while Lance’s was much more intricate than that.

Although the result was not much different, and what counted for intricacy for the god of sleep was a shower and blow-drying his hair. Immortals, am I right? 

Another thing Keith found frivolous about mortals was their work, their jobs, the mundanity of it all. Lance, on the other hand, envied having something to do other than putting creatures to sleep.

Which is why now, in the small hours of the night on the streets of a cold and unyielding city, he was buzzing with energy. The malfunctioning streetlights and scuttling alley rats were a kind of magic of their own, and the god of sleep was wide awake. 

“Ugh, this city,” scowls Keith, wiping his shoe off the concrete after he’d stepped into something nasty. 

“This city,” comes an awed whisper from Lance, gazing at the lifeless concrete buildings scattered around the warehouse district. His giddiness was the kind only non-human creatures could have for the mindless cogs in human society. Their warehouses, their storage facilities, the houses for their dead things- their technology. 

But they weren’t here for a tour of the city’s many warehouses. They had a job to take care of. 

Keith takes out his phone, another one of human’s dead little creations that Lance was in love with, to check the address. A map appears on the screen, something Lance’s flip phone was incapable of. He left his smartphone at home- both he and Keith knew well how easily distracted Lance was- so Keith was their navigator for this particular job. 

Usually, the stench of Titan  _ parts _ was easy to detect, however, after being exposed to the surface for long enough the little sentience they had helped keep them undetected. 

Lance both loved and hated this job. 

On the one hand, humanity was fascinating to observe, especially when they got so up close. It was also fascinating to touch and be touched in his mortal vessel, a whole new array of feelings and sensations. The silk of Keith’s hair, the smoothness of his skin, the tenderness of his lips. An entire array of sensations indeed. 

But on the other hand, there was the fact that their mortal vessels could never hold them for too long. And, the  _ job. _ The chopped up remains of Titans godliness’ that escaped their prison in Tartarus. 

One would think if Zeus were capable of  _ anything _ , it would be keeping the godly essence of his parents and elders locked up in Tartarus- if not for anyone but his own sake. But of course, it came down to other gods to clean up the mess once…  _ pieces  _ escaped.

Now, it wasn’t as gorey as it seemed. Like the wild tendrils of Lance’s powers his body couldn’t contain sometimes, the Titan  _ pieces _ were more like ghosts. Echoes of long forgotten power, so muddled that their origins were indiscernible. Was it Oceanus? Cronus? Mnemosyne? Beyond the fact that they were Titans, Lance could rarely tell whether he was fighting oceans or the age old concept of fairness.

“Here it is,” Keith says, his eyes so glued to his phone he didn’t notice Lance lagging a few steps back. Lance tucks his hands into his jean pockets and shrugs, ignoring the way Keith gestures at the door.  _ He doesn’t want to go in together. _

Keith sighs and Lance throws him a peace sign before ducking into the alley, leaving Keith standing alone before the warehouse door. He jogs and avoids stepping over the sleeping rats, the power he used to make his footsteps quiet having put the vermin to sleep too.  _ Running out of time indeed- _ he could only hope this was the last of the Titan remains in the city.

He glances at the fire escape mounted along the neighboring building, but decides not even  _ his _ powers could make his ascend quiet using it. He again uses his power, trying to contain it as best as possible, and scales the building.

Everything is dead. Everything is asleep. 

Lance is silent as he enters through the window, scanning the area around him for any immediate threat and finding none. He glances beneath him, the catwalk giving him an excellent view of the happenings on the warehouse floor. He sees Keith, his mullet as recognizable as ever, and the Titan piece speaking. 

Lance tilts his head. It didn’t seem like a strong one, Keith would be able to take care of it no problem, but…

He looks around again. A piece that weak wouldn’t be able to mask itself so efficiently. There had to be another-  _ there.  _ Almost imperceptible in the shadows, hovering right over where Keith stood. 

Lance doesn’t think, he only sprints. His power granting him enough stealth so he can run up to the Titan piece undetected. Taking the opportunity, he jumps and rips off the only piece of the ghost that seemed palpable- and he strikes gold. 

The Titan piece dissipates behind him as he clenches the object in his fist. The once glinting gold is now covered in an inky sheen of sleep, but Lance can still recognize the item for what it is. 

A bird wing- broken off from the crown of Tethys, Titaness of water and mother to the Oceanids. 

Lance tucks the trinket away in his jacket pocket. If this was Tethys, then the Titan piece below must be a ghost of Oceanus, Titan of oceans. 

Sometimes, the Titan pieces brought fragments along to the surface. A broken crown, pearls off of a bracelet- the biggest Lance had found was the hilt of a blade used by Cronus himself. It was the same day the Olympians decided the little  _ Titan leakage _ was becoming an actual problem, and he and Keith were assigned to take care of it.

He looks over to the warehouse floor, where Keith is still attempting to communicate with the ghost. Some of them  _ do  _ have enough intelligence to communicate, but looking at the odd shape of this one, Lance doubts it. Still, he grips the balcony railing and pushes himself with enough force to leap off of it, gently and soundlessly landing on the floor next to Keith. 

Keith  _ tsks. _

“Don’t push your vessel like that,” he warns and Lance rolls his eyes. Keith probably would have used the rickety fire escape too, instead of scaling the building. 

Maybe this was why  _ his  _ vessels lasted longer.

“Let’s just take care of this,” he smirks, not caring for the way the ghost seems to shudder at his words.

~~

Sleep and Death, they go hand in hand. Walking through the streets of a city that doesn’t care much for either.

“Wanna get some Chinese food?” Lance asks, leaning into Keith as they walk.

“We don’t need to eat, Lance,” Keith points out, checking his work emails. Though who would send him an email at 3:47AM, Lance doesn’t know. 

“Ugh, you’re no fun,” Lance nudges him, and Keith wraps an arm around his waist to keep him in place.

“There’s an open McDonalds just around the corner,” Keith suggests and Lance smiles. Well, it wasn’t ambrosia,  _ but _ .

“Hell yeah, McDonalds!!” Lance cheers, his voice echoing through the city, and Keith laughs. Despite their vessels weakening, despite the threat of the Titans coming back, Olympus and its ghosts could wait after their date.


End file.
